Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology: Effects of Rapid Evolution on Alternative Community States at Multiple Spatial Scales

Fellow's name: Lucas Nell Proposal number: 2209354

Research title: Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology: Effects of Rapid Evolution on Alternative Community States at Multiple Spatial Scales Sponsoring scientist(s) and host institution(s): Tadashi Fukami, Stanford University

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2022, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. This project will study how rapid evolution affects patterns of alternative ecological community states through space.

Alternative community states are the different outcomes that are possible for a particular ecological community, and they arise as a result of chance events that occur while communities are forming. By using both laboratory experiments and mathematical models, this research will help understand how evolution affects the historical contingency that makes predicting community outcomes notoriously difficult.

Additionally, it has clear implications for understanding other microbial communities such as those in the human gut. The fellow will also help broaden the participation of underrepresented groups through (1) mentorship of an undergraduate research team and (2) a paid internship program for formerly incarcerated research scholars.

This research will study how rapid evolution alters alternative community states at both single-community and metacommunity (a network of interconnected communities) scales. Microbes in sticky monkey-flower nectar are an ideal study system because they can be easily used to replicate the process of community assembly in the laboratory and because the constituent species can rapidly evolve ecological traits.

The research will address two main questions: (1) How does rapid trait evolution affect the compositions of alternative community states and their prevalence across a metacommunity? In laboratory microcosm experiments, the initial standing variation for traits affecting alternative community states will be manipulated, and the patterns of community states through space will be compared for low-variation (i.e., weaker evolution) and high-variation treatments. (2) Under what conditions do rapid evolution and immigration alter how alternative metacommunity states affect species coexistence?

A mathematical model will be developed to simulate the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of microbe communities in sticky monkey-flower nectar. Simulations will be used to assess how metacommunity-level coexistence among species can be maintained despite alternative states that should inhibit coexistence. In addressing both questions, the fellow will develop new skills in building a system-specific model from the ground up, fitting experimental data to a mechanistic model, and working with microbes in the laboratory.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.